Beckett of the Mnemosyne (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bookofnope) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
snowblindrpg2016-10-06 08:28 pm
bookofnope) wrote in snowblindrpg2016-10-06 08:28 pm
[network] @Mnemosyne; video; the light we cannot see [open] Night 165
I can't sleep.
[The tablet is on the floor, lighting its own patch of paleness on the ceiling above. Beckett is lying next to it, prone on his back - that's what the angle of his arm, raised half-heartedly into the frame, suggests. He pulls more clearly into view for a moment, rising to a sitting position, to squint at the camera. His glasses are off, and his eyes glow a faint red in an ashen face.]
For all I know, I imagined it - the girl, the eyes. I'm certain the red pen was real, though, and the choice that came with it.
[He falls back again. Too tired to sit up. The tablet records to show nothing but light and shadow as he speaks.]
It may have been just me. Doubtful, but possible... but it was not just me who saw things. Perhaps we all did. I'd like to know what. Piece of some whole, or just another attack on what's left of our collective sanity... either way. For the sake of the record, if not any kind of answer.
[His relationship with answers isn't getting any less complicated. His voice drops low, dreamlike as he speaks on.] I saw a girl wearing a cloak. She was drawing the eyes, all around me... around me... until I was surrounded. She climbed on my back and drew her eyes on mine, and I knew there was no leaving. There has never been, not for me. Perhaps we are all...
[Too much. He stops abruptly, and rises again, grabbing for the tablet.]
It's all in my notes.
[The recording ends. In its place he sends his notes file out again.]
[The tablet is on the floor, lighting its own patch of paleness on the ceiling above. Beckett is lying next to it, prone on his back - that's what the angle of his arm, raised half-heartedly into the frame, suggests. He pulls more clearly into view for a moment, rising to a sitting position, to squint at the camera. His glasses are off, and his eyes glow a faint red in an ashen face.]
For all I know, I imagined it - the girl, the eyes. I'm certain the red pen was real, though, and the choice that came with it.
[He falls back again. Too tired to sit up. The tablet records to show nothing but light and shadow as he speaks.]
It may have been just me. Doubtful, but possible... but it was not just me who saw things. Perhaps we all did. I'd like to know what. Piece of some whole, or just another attack on what's left of our collective sanity... either way. For the sake of the record, if not any kind of answer.
[His relationship with answers isn't getting any less complicated. His voice drops low, dreamlike as he speaks on.] I saw a girl wearing a cloak. She was drawing the eyes, all around me... around me... until I was surrounded. She climbed on my back and drew her eyes on mine, and I knew there was no leaving. There has never been, not for me. Perhaps we are all...
[Too much. He stops abruptly, and rises again, grabbing for the tablet.]
It's all in my notes.
[The recording ends. In its place he sends his notes file out again.]
no subject
Are you saying you revived for certain from a proven state of death? When did this happen? [The vampire point is going right over their head for now. Vampires aren't something they talk about much in their world- too many real monsters to make up a lot of fake ones. And as far as Hange knows, things like vampires are fake in their world.]
Either of those technologies sound impossible to me, but I suppose teleportation would be... less impossible. That would be transporting a person from one part of a world to another location in that same world, which seems, theoretically, easier to do than to not only prove the existence of other worlds, but to tap into them and transport people from their reality into this one. When you break it down, I would think you'd have to develop the technology for teleportation before you could develop the technology for dimensional travel.
voice;
As for your question - I was dead for some three hundred years before being brought here. Certifiably dead. An acquaintance of mine ran an experiment that yielded unquestionable proof of the fullness of the state during vampiric turning. Yet my body now certainly functions as though living. Though for all I know those functions are simulated, for some obscure reason which is probably not to make me suffer despite how it seems most of the time.
[He is bitter forever FOREVER.]
And I would agree with you, if we were exclusively considering technology as the means, which I do not. But the option that there is, indeed, no one left in this world to bring in... has its merits. As a theory.
no subject
As for belief, I'm not entirely sure what to believe. I believe that he did see something, made contact with something, maybe. I don't know why he was singled out from the group, but the visions were very real to him, and that's probably the important part. Whether what he saw and heard was the truth or just some altered version of it, that much I don't know.
[The next part trips Hange up a little. Three hundred years?]
I... well, I guess we can't completely exclude the possibility that those functions are simulated, but there was also the incident with the anomaly below, where it appeared to have completely destroyed a physical body. Either these are both simulations, or we really are looking at the revival of the dead. Or the creation of new bodies.
Do you think there are still people out there? Outside of the town?
no subject
[The implications, when he pursues them, are frankly terrifying. He'd rather have Hange's input before he follows that line of thought any further.]
Haurchefant would likely tell you that his death was too real, subjectively, to be a simulation. I... would normally agree, but what has been done to me goes far and beyond any kind of magic or intervention with which I am familiar from my world. And I'm familiar with most. What might be left... [he trails off, the spoken equivalent of a helpless shrug.]
And truthfully? I don't know. I don't think I'd like to speculate. The odds don't seem to be in our favour here.
no subject
[Hange chews on this "Beast" thought for a moment.]
What do you think the Beast is? I feel like you have an opinion on this subject. Do you think the Beast is supernatural? If it is, it's pretty good at using technology, since that seems to form the basis for all of the strange happenings around here.
But then, you don't think that what happened to you or Haurchefant was supernatural? [Something beyond the scale of something as far-reaching as "magic"? Now that's concerning.]
no subject
[And trailing off, as he considers the impact of this on Hange's question, its possible answers.]
I am convinced that the Entity is not man-made, and not the result of human technology gone awry. To me, the only alternative is supernatural... but this is not my world, and unlike certain doctors who give skepticism a bad name, I try not to be dogmatic in my assumptions. If there is a third option you can suggest, I'd like to hear it.
[It could be aliens, is perhaps what he's saying. But he can't help but still think that sounds silly. Apparently some things sound silly even to a vampire.]
And I couldn't say, regarding Haurchefant. But vampirism is definitely a supernatural state. I find it extremely hard to believe any technological intervention could truly undo it. Insulting, even.
no subject
I'll admit that the idea of nanomachines is very new to me- nothing even remotely like it exists in our world, at least to my knowledge. I suppose it's possible that it was invented and then suppressed by the royal family, but, the point is, I can only go on what other people have told me about how it works. If I wasn't a scientist, I would probably think it was some kind of magic. It might as well be, for how advanced it is.
I'll also admit that I don't know much about vampires or the supernatural in general- ghosts or magic or things like that. We have our monsters back home, and there are those who believe in God, but I wouldn't consider those to be the same sort of thing.
What I'm trying to say is... For all I know about them, these two things, magic and advanced technology, they're practically the same to me. One is something that hasn't been fully understood yet, and the other is something that hasn't been invented yet. I won't shut myself off to the possibility of either, because that wouldn't make much sense. Things are what they are, and that doesn't change depending on what you believe in or don't.
In short, I'm willing to believe in either, assuming it turns out to be the truth. But right now... I'm inclined to go with a combination of both. House's theory about augmented reality explains most of what we see and experience- but not all of it. If Haurchefant really was dissolved into an anomaly, if some intelligent thing is living under the town and reaching out to us to communicate, if a vampire was turned into a living person- those things would suggest something other than a technological explanation. Maybe not everything has the same root cause. Or if it does, maybe that cause isn't wholly scientific or supernatural.